Learning To Fly
by Dreamweaving
Summary: "Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."


"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."

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><p>Sometimes, you just have to give things a try. Because if you live your entire life standing still, were you really living at all? If you let the world just pass you by while you worry and fret about what could happen, then life will be gone in a flash and you'll have missed out.<p>

Some people do just sit and let things happen to other people while they waste their lives. But some will spread their wings and take to the skies and fly. Metaphorically speaking of course. If we all went around sprouting wings like birds, the world would be pretty ridiculous. Not to mention the mess all those feathers would make when moulting occured.

But I digress.

Some people are just happy to let the world slide by. Mostly because they haven't realized their missing anything. And almost always because their too scared to try.

Tavros Nitram was one such individual. For six sweeps-roughly thirteen years for you humans out there-Tavros has watched things happen to others for the most part. The things that do manage to happen to him are, from his experience, rather unfortunate. Which might be why he'd rather things happen to other people.

His Flarping days had ended with him laying at the bottom of a cliff, unable to feel his legs and hearing the laughter of Vriska Serket echoing around him. It had hurt an awful lot and he'd been scared and sad and betrayed all at once. Vriska was still his friend, even now. He still looked up to her, even now. She was a lot of things he'd never been but wanted so desperately to become.

Not the psychotic murderer part. I think we can all agree it would take a _special_ kind of someone to want that. And while Tavros was undoubtably special, he wasn't quite that brand of _special_. It's different with italics you see.

No. What Tavros wanted to be was brave and confident. And Vriska had an abundance of both confidence and bravery. Plenty to spare in fact, but even hanging around her for so long he never seemed to find any of it rubbing off on him like he might have dimly hoped.

He didn't stop liking her. And it was more than just because he admired her. That was how Tavros was. He forgave others. For most things anyway. Trying to kill him and rendering him paralyzed among them, apparently.

Flarping had been the extent of Tavros' adventures though. And without that, he ended up spending a lot of time just sitting at home and playing Fiduspawn with Tinkerbull. And reading Pupa Pan a lot. Though he'd done that even before the 'accident'. The book was pretty worn by this point. And may or may not have had some messy brown stains on some pages from what he would ferverently deny could have been tears. Although, that was in fact what they were.

Life just kept slipping by. Slowly. Day by day. Things happened to other people and Tavros was content with that. He decided he could be like Pupa Pan. Never grow up. Never have to deal with scary things like growing up in troll society. Which, in fact, was scary for most trolls. Although they managed just fine.

Tavros didn't really want to grow up though. And the story of Pupa Pan put such ideas in his head. Beautiful ideas, certainly, but nothing more than just fantasy. The whimsies of childhood. Nothing more. He certainly learned fast enough not to mention it to most others. Expecially Vriska.

But that shouldn't have come as a surprise or anything.

All in all, he felt life probably could have been somewhat okay though. Up until the growing up started. Although, technically speaking, they'd all been growing up all along anyway. But this was a different sort of growing up, really. The sort of growing up where young trolls start to really _notice_ one another.

Or most of them anyway. Probably someone had forgotten to send Tavros the memo. Maybe all along Vriska's treatment of him had been the buddings of blackrom. Who knows? He certainly didn't. He didn't even actualy notice for a really long time after _she_ had that there was any sort of _feelings_ involved at all. Other than that contagious troll disease they call friendship anyway. Which he honestly had thought was all there was between he and Vriska.

Then again, he was probably a bit broken in that department anyway.

It was a little less difficult to notice the redish feelings from another source though. Either that or a severe lack of understanding for quadrants entirely. Tavros really couldn't tell which. But it doesn't get more obvious than your friend asking if you want to make out with him. Which was exactly the offer he recieved at total random one day from his good friend Gamzee.

Tavros had decided it was best to not talk to his clown friend for a while. Just until the awkward of that encounter went away. Not that Gamzee was probably aware of any awkwardness at all. It's not that Tavros didn't like Gamzee. He liked him just fine. And there was probably plenty to pity about him. But he honestly didn't want to think about that. Because thinking about that meant admitting that he was growing up. And how could he ever be like Pupa Pan if he let that happen?

After that whole fiasco, he built himself a fort out of cardboard boxes and hung out in it for a while, pretending it was the headquartors of the Lost Grubs and that he was Pupa Pan himself, preparing to lead them out on a grand adventure. He set up some plush toys to play the part of his troup of Lost Grubs and made himself a paper sword. It was fun for a while. But doing that kind of stuff by yourself can get pretty lonely, pretty fast.

Sometimes he wished he could get some of his friends to play these games of pretend with him. But most of them would laugh, probably. Or think it was lame.

He just left the fort out on the lawn, filled with plush toys and paper swords and drawings of maps of places he never conquered and plans for adventures that never happened.

It was hard.

It was hard growing up.

And he didn't want to do it.

Life moves on and things kept happening to other people while he just sat back and watched. In a world without SGrub he might have continued doing so until the Imperial Drones showed up to cull him. Or maybe he would have just ended up being a late bloomer. Might have pulled himself together and managed to get a clue about Vriska. Potentially he might have actualy worked up the courage to take a look at his own feelings and sort them out.

Maybe. In a world without SGrub.

But who's to know? That wasn't the path his life went down. It went down that path where SGrub happened.

He did eventually figure out what Vriska was doing. Although by then neither one of them knew if what might have been forming between them was black or red. He didn't think he could hate her. He _liked _her too much. But he didn't think he could pity her either. He _looked up_ to her. She was so many things he wanted to be. Maybe if he'd known her a little better he could have found pity for her. Her life wasn't nearly as amazing as she always tried to make it out to be afterall. But as things were, he just _couldn't_.

Was it really so bad that he just wanted to _like_ her? To be her friend and try to be cool and brave like she was? Was that so bad?

It seemed that way. He really tried. He did. But even he wasn't completely forgiving. He had a breaking point. And she pushed him until he reached it.

He still didn't hate her, even when he charged her with his spear. It was stupid. She was stronger. She was _God Tier_. It wasn't him trying to hurt her or kill her. He knew he couldn't. Not with the distance between them in ability and power.

Maybe he did it because he thought it was what she wanted. Maybe if he did what she wanted him to do, she'd like him. Just a little. Let up on the constant harrassment. They'd had fun adventuring together hadn't they? Maybe they could do that again. If he just showed her that he could be brave and face her...

He'd spent his whole life watching things happen to other people. Now it was time he made things happen for him.

For just a moment, maybe he flew.

But he'd taken too long. And someone had already clipped his wings.


End file.
